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It was a bizarre scene. The scribes, the teachers of the Law, were sitting
in the house with Jesus when suddenly there was a knock at the ceiling. It was a loud knock, a bang
really, followed by an unnerving racket as hammers pounded and crowbars creaked, and then stones and
boards and dust all began to crash down into the room where the scribes and Jesus were meeting. And
then Jesus and the scribes watched in astonishment as four men lowered a friend down into the room
to meet with Jesus. It's just not your everyday way of doing things.
Everyone in town had heard about the authority with which Jesus spoke, about the authority
with which he preached and taught. So once again, on this day, they were all pressing around the
house where Jesus was staying, just as they had all crowded earlier around the house of Simon's
mother-in-law, wanting to see what Jesus would say and do today. And because of the crowds, the
four men couldn't get their friend to Jesus through the door, so they carried him up to the roof and
began breaking into the house from above.
What do you suppose these four men were seeking for their friend? Was it a cure they
wanted? Did they want Jesus to heal their friend so that he could walk again? Maybe. That would
certainly be a blessing for a paralyzed man. Certainly they and their friend would be pleased to
have that happen.
But I wonder if there isn't more to the story than that. I wonder if there wasn't something
more they wanted, something more they sought.
Mark says that "when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, 'My son, your sins are
forgiven.'" What a strange thing to say!
Or maybe it wasn't so strange. Maybe it wasn't so strange if we remember the burden the
paralytic was carrying, the burden that everyone carried in those days. For all the people there
that day had been taught that if someone were sick -- if he was a leper, like the man in last
week's story; or if he was smitten with boils and other misfortunes like Job; or if he was
paralyzed, like the man in today's story -- he must deserve it. He must be a sinner, unworthy of
the fellowship of righteous people. When something bad happened to a person, they had been taught,
it was because he was bad.
"What has this man done?" the teachers of the Law must have wondered as he was lowered to
the floor. Had he worked on the Sabbath? Had he not paid the Temple tax? Had he eaten unclean
food or kept company with unclean people? Any of those sins, and a host of others as well, might
account for the fact that he can't walk now.
But the young man and his friends had heard what Jesus did just last week, how Jesus had
made the unclean clean, how he had reached out and touched the leper and brought him back into the
fellowship of the community again. The leper himself had told everyone about it.
So I'm wondering if this paralyzed man and his friends weren't really seeking something more
than a cure for his paralysis. I'm wondering if they weren't perhaps all seeking a deeper healing,
release from a spiritual burden as well.
I'm wondering if their friend wasn't really a good man, perhaps even a righteous man like
Job. And I wonder if, like Job, they weren't hoping to ask Jesus why bad things happen to good
people like their friend. I wonder if they weren't hoping to ask Jesus if it really is true that
God says "no" to sinners by making bad things happen to them, hoping to ask Jesus if it is true that
it is God who caused their friend to be paralyzed. After all, Jesus spoke with authority, they
knew, and they wanted to ask Jesus, "Is God for us, or against us?"
And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, "My son, your sins are forgiven." And
the scribes who were there -- all the keepers of the law, the keepers of religion -- were
thinking to themselves, "How can this man talk like that? He speaks blasphemy! We know that no one
can forgive sins except God. The Law is clear about that."
And Jesus knew what they were thinking, says Mark, so he said, "OK, let's do it another way,
whichever way is easier for you." And he turned to the paralyzed man and said, "Stand up; take up
your bed, and go home." And the man got up, and at once took his bed and went out in full view of
everyone, so that they were all astounded and praised God. 'Never before have we seen anything like
this!' they said."
Why were they astounded? Had nothing like that ever happened before? Or was it just that
they had never had eyes to see it? Had they never seen one son of man forgive another son of man?
Had they never seen one human person forgive another human person? Perhaps not. Perhaps that's
why they were so astonished.
And their astonishment was all the greater because the Law told them that it couldn't be
done, while Jesus was there to tell them that it most certainly can be done.
You know, there is an ambiguity in the text we need to keep in mind here. Jesus tells the
paralyzed man to stand up, and to take up his bed and go home, for a reason. He tells the paralytic
to stand up, and to take up his bed and go home, so that the teachers of the Law and everyone else
might know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins. The ambiguity is in the
term "son of man." When we read "son of man" in many of our English Bibles, it is capitalized,
because, as someone said, the English like to capitalize things. Capitalizing "son of man" is an
attempt to remove the ambiguity. But in the text itself, "son of man" is not capitalized, because
the Greeks didn't do that. And among the Jews in biblical days, the term "son of man" was often
just another way of saying "a man," as in the eighth psalm, when the psalmist asks God the same
question two lines in a row:
What is man that you should be mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
So what does Jesus mean when he says that "the son of man has authority on earth to forgive
sins?" Does Jesus capitalize "son of man" with a certain tone of voice, meaning that he wants to
show us that he, Jesus, is God and has authority to forgive sins on earth as he has in heaven? Is
he saying that since the paralytic is paralyzed because he is a sinner, and since only God can
forgive sins, and since he, Jesus, is going to heal him (which could happen only if his sins were
forgiven), then he, Jesus, is God?" Or is Jesus saying that since the paralytic stands up and walks
home when Jesus tells him to, and since he, Jesus, is obviously a man, then God has obviously given
authority to human beings on earth to share his healing power by forgiving sins? Or does Jesus
speak his word with ambiguity as well as with authority in order to leave it to us to chew on for a
while?
Either way, Jesus is certainly doing something new, which is what Isaiah had promised.
"Stop dwelling on the way things used to be," the Lord said through the prophet; "I'm going to do a
new thing." "Can't you see it?" Jesus later asks the teachers of the Law. "But, if it's easier for
you, and so that you can see that there is authority on earth for a human one to forgive sins, I say
to this man, 'Stand up; take up your mat, and go home.' And the man got up, and at once took up his
mat, and went out in full view of them all."
Do you see it? There is authority on earth for a human one to forgive sins, authority to
share the healing power of God that can release a brother or sister from the heavy burden of a sense
of unworthiness and loneliness.
Last week, Father Richardson reminded us that there are many in our world who feel
untouchable, many who carry the burden of isolation and loneliness, even of unworthiness and fear,
and who long for the loving touch of another human being, a touch that can heal their souls if not
their bodies. Many who are ill, physically or mentally; many who are physically or mentally
disabled -- many, many of them long for the compassion, the mercy, of a healing touch, for a word
that will restore them to fellowship and community. So do many who are nearing death, and others
who suffer traumatic loss. So do some who hold a different faith, or who speak a different
language, or who have a different color of skin. And often all that is necessary to heal them, to
bring them into that fellowship that Jesus offered to the leper and the paralytic, is a loving touch
or a loving word.
Such restoration of fellowship is the deeper healing Jesus shows us in Mark's Gospel today.
"And I want to show you that a human person has authority to offer it on earth," Jesus tells us.
"It's an authority God shares with a son of man."
"This word is addressed both to the rebellious, unbelieving hearts of the scribes," says
John Purdy, "and to the naive, trusting hearts of those who brought their friend on the pallet.
Emmanuel brings forgiveness. God freely forgives sins. That is the primary meaning of the story of
the paralytic.
"Oh, there are secondary meanings to the story. Sickness is an apt metaphor for sin, and
healing is always and everywhere a reminder of divine mercy. But in reading scripture we must be
careful not to mistake secondary for primary meanings. Surely the face of God we see here in Jesus
is that of the Redeemer, who frees us from the bondage of sin. God's chief business with us is not
healing, but forgiveness." [In God with a Human Face] And forgiveness is a healing power a human
being has authority to share with God on earth.
St. Paul reminds us this morning that God is like that. Paul says that with us human
beings, life is often "yes" and "no," often conditional. "On the one hand, if things go well, then
'yes.' If you deserve it, then OK. But on the other hand...." That's the way it is with us:
"yes" and "no."
But with God, says Paul, it is never a mixture of "yes" and "no." With God it is always
"yes" through Christ.
Is that not what God is doing to us through the Bible this morning? Is he not showing us
that God is always for us, no matter our circumstances, no matter our condition, no matter our sin?
And if God is for us, should we not be for each other as well?
Despite changing circumstances, despite the changing lives of "ungrace" we tend to live, God
is always for us, always giving, always forgiving. There is, as the prophet says, always a new good
thing God has in mind for us, a burden he's always ready to lift. And that is what endures --
God's grace. We can count on it. The lousy circumstances of life can change. Your feet may swell
as you get older, your eyes may go blind, you may be paralyzed and have to pound your way through
the roof to get to Jesus, you most certainly will die, but God's being for us never changes. "My
child," he says, "your sins are forgiven."
And we're amazed. We just can't believe it. So accustomed are we to thinking "on the one
hand this, but on the other hand that." So accustomed are we to living in that conditional way
with each other, that when God simply says, "Yes; take up your bed, and go home," we're astounded.
So accustomed are we to believing that if we mess up and sin, well, then, bad things happen to
people who do that...so accustomed are we to believing this that we simply are unprepared for grace
when it happens.
"My child, your sins are forgiven," says Jesus. "Remember this: God loves you. God is for
you, not against you. Stand up; take up your bed, and go home." That's the good news this morning.
And we're astounded. "Never before have we seen anything like this," we say.
What is new and powerful and refreshing and restoring about this, said Bishop Stephen Neill,
is that "forgiveness recognizes the wrongdoer as a person. He has done wrong, and about that there
is no pretence. But this is not the whole truth about him. He is still of infinite value as a
person, since every person is unique and irreplaceable by any other. Since he has so greatly
injured himself by doing wrong, he is in special need of help, and help that can be rendered only by
the one to whom he has done the wrong. ...Forgiveness can spring only from a self-forgetfulness
that is more concerned about another's well-being than about its own, and that longs for the renewal
of fellowship even when fellowship has been flouted and destroyed by the willful aggression of
another."
The mercy which forgiveness is, this longing for the renewal of fellowship, is of God. And
it is of the human one, of the son of man as well, when the human one lives on earth as God lives on
earth.
In Jesus, mercy, the forgiveness of sin, the healing power of God, has bent down and kissed
the son of man in order that the son of man might embrace the mercy of God, and be restored and
live.
Or, as Shakespeare says it:
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